


right here

by ladyzanra



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Episode Tag, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-14
Updated: 2014-01-14
Packaged: 2018-01-08 04:35:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1128425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyzanra/pseuds/ladyzanra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is something new, but it feels old.</p><p>coda for 9.09</p>
            </blockquote>





	right here

He decides he’s not going to take his bag with his spare clothes and his toothbrush and other ‘necessities’ with him. He doesn’t need them anymore. He walks into the bathroom and stares at his reflection in the small motel mirror. It stares back at him, pale and sharp-edged and purposeful, yet vacant. He washes his hands with the flowery handsoap he’d liked so much as a human, watches the orangey water slide between the cracks in his fingers and down the drain. It’s not that he doesn’t like the scent anymore; it’s that he can’t really smell it at all. His body is flooded with Grace, racing with it, the wild pulse of the universe making everything here, everything  _human_ , seem distant and colorless, small; unscented.

He walks into the main room and looks at the bed. He remembers coming back to the room after a long day spent almost entirely on his feet, his body exhausted and sore, and finding the most unexpectedly blissful repose there, snug under the warm soft covers, curled into the pillow. He remembers, also, praying on the bed, kneeling down beside it, bowing face-to-carpet in front of it, the anxiety and uncertainty of it, the torment of the unfathomable silence hanging over his head.

He squints.

He thinks he had been a rather weak human, a frightened and sensitive one; but he can’t tell if that’s his own thought, or if that’s Theo’s Grace speaking. Theo’s Grace is not entirely pure, and then there’s the thing where it’s not  _his_ ; it mixes with Cas’s own perspective sometimes as if it has a voice of its own. He hasn’t yet figured out where, exactly, to draw the line.

He didn’t need to come back here. In fact, it’s the last place he should have gone, since other angels have already tracked him to here once. He wonders why he’s being so stupid right now. But a part of him. A part of him knows why.

He walks out and shuts the door behind him.

__

He’s been hitchhiking for a little more than an hour when he hears it, like a sudden rap on the window or a passing streak of color in the drab rainy scenery.

_Cas   Cas can you    me_

Dean.

_Cas    I need you to    fucked       fucked up so damn    please I don’t     damn it_

It feels different this time. This Grace’s connection to human souls is poor, and Dean’s prayer keeps cutting out. Even when it doesn’t, it’s so faint that Cas can’t be completely sure he’s not imagining it.

Cas focuses hard, but he doesn’t hear anything else.

"Whose’s Dean?" asks the driver.

"I need your phone," Cas turns to him.

The driver gives him this look like,  _oh really?_

"Now," says Cas.

"Hold up just a minute, mister—"

Cas puts his hand to the dashboard, and the pick-up truck slows down and pulls itself off to the side of the road. It turns off and locks its doors.

Cue negotiations.  
  
The driver proposes that Cas can keep the phone if Cas promises to leave the man the fuck alone for the rest of his days. Cas agrees. Cas gets out and dials Dean’s number as the truck rumbles to life behind him and screeches back onto the road and out of sight. He makes his way for the rest area further down the road.

“Hello? Who is this?” Dean sounds exhausted. There’s none of the hostility he usually has when answering a call he doesn’t recognize.

"I heard your prayer. Well, some of it."

"Cas?" There’s either surprised relief or a rather numb, dead sort of relief in Dean’s voice. Whatever it is, it makes Cas’s chest constrict a little, confusingly.

"This angel’s Grace isn’t very experienced in receiving prayers. What’s wrong?"

"Kevin’s dead.” Dean just blurts it out. "And Sam’s – Sam’s missing, he’s just gone. That Not-Zeke angel impostor took off with him. I fucked up so bad, Cas,” Dean’s voice is small and broken. It reminds Cas of the voice Dean had used in the hospital long ago after almost being killed by Alastair. "I need you here. I. I can’t fix this."

"I’ll be there as soon as I can."

"I’m sorry," Dean whispers after a moment. "I’m so sorry.”

Cas frowns a little.  
  
He ends the call.

He realizes his heart is pounding. He can  _feel_  it, somewhat, even through all the whooshing and whirring of Grace. Strange.

He drops the phone into his pocket. As he does so, he feels a dull pang in his side, near his lower left ribs, and winces. He ignores it. He walks through the rest area’s parking lot. He manages to get a ride heading toward Kansas without having to coerce or threaten, for which he is grateful.  
  
The new driver is a young, heavily-tattooed man who listens to music that sounds more like screaming than singing **.** Cas sits silently in the passenger seat and tries to reach out to Dean, to get a glimpse of what Dean’s doing right now, whether he’s saying something, what expression he has on his face, anything. But he can’t. It’s like trying to land a plane on a pin head. During a storm. This Grace is too unruly, too wild, too fast and blind, and Cas is swept far beyond his target, every time. Finally he stops trying.  
  
Cas has rarely been unable to get to Dean when he’s wanted or needed to, in the past. He feels weirdly panicked and grows impatient with the long road ahead.  
  
He thinks that actually maybe a plane would have been a better choice.

"Whoa dude, you’re bleeding.” The driver has to yell to be heard over the music.

Cas looks down. There’s a red stain on his shirt, on his left side, just visible beneath his unbuttoned jacket.

"No bleeding on the seat. They don’t like it when you do that.” The driver fishes around and then hands Cas a plastic grocery bag. “Here. Put that under you. So what, you tear some stitches? You get in a fight?”

"No," Cas stares at the bag and then sort of, wedges it awkwardly under his leg, frowning. He raises his voice. "I consumed another angel’s Grace when I already had a tattoo to ward against angels."

The driver looks at him.

"Never mind," Cas decides.

He unbuttons his shirt and looks down at his ribs where the warding tattoo is. He can’t see the Enochian markings for the blood and the burns. It’s worse than he thought. The Grace is hissing, boiling against the warding spell inked into his skin. And he can  _feel_  it. It’s not like when he was stabbed or cut as a human, but it’s still pain. It’s human pain.

Because this time, Cas is both the vessel and the angel.

Perplexing knot in angel-metaphyics or not – in _Cas_ metaphysics – it’s not a catastrophe, he thinks. At least not yet. Just as he’s the vessel that can feel pain, he’s also the angel that can alleviate it, heal it; he could heal himself right now, return the inked skin to a healthy state. He could even purge the lettering and get rid of the warding tattoo all together.  
  
That would probably be the best course of action.  
  
He hesitates. Then he simply makes the blood vanish and cleans the shirt. When it starts to bleed again, he repeats the process, careful not to bleed on the driver’s seat, as instructed.  
  
The driver’s peeking over at it. When Cas looks up, the driver looks away. “’Another angel’s Grace’,” shouts the driver, aiming for casual but sounding uncomfortable. “Does that make you an angel too, then?”

Cas puts his hand to the dashboard and makes the entire display glow with light. (Except it doesn’t blind the driver to the road; Cas makes sure of that. It does turn off the music momentarily, replacing it with a soft, pious choir; it’s a hard sound to wrangle out of the corrupted Grace, but Cas manages it somehow.)

Then he lets the light fade and his hand drop. The screaming music returns. “I’m not sure what I am,” Cas sighs.

The driver turns the music off and just stares at the road ahead for a long time. “I'm high,” he says at last. "That's it, isn't it. High as a kite."

 __

Cas picked up the trench coat at a thrift store close to the bunker. He’d wanted to put another layer between Dean and the bleeding Enochian on his side so that would have less of a chance of seeing it and therefore worrying. Or he’d been cold. He can’t figure out which. Now he digs in the pocket for the phone, standing in front of the closed, silent bunker door, to call Dean and tell him he’s here.

Dean opens the door before Cas finishes dialing.

He’s so dark and empty around the eyes that Cas is almost made off-kilter by it; would be, if he could still feel the impact of these things like a human does.

“Cas.” It’s so passive it’s almost like a question.

“I’m here. What do you need me to do?”

Dean stares, takes in the trench coat, blinks. Then shakes himself slightly. “I don’t… I already gave Kevin a, you know.”

Cas nods. “Any news on Sam?” he asks, straight to the point. The human part of Cas, the part that’s bleeding itself dry against the Grace beneath his jacket, is dismayed at his abruptness.

“No. I’m so fucking stupid. I knew Sam wouldn’t have wanted it but I did it anyway, let the angel in, and then every time something fishy happened, something red-flag… I just pretended it didn’t mean what I thought it did. I just lied and lied, kept telling myself it was my only choice.” His eyes are glittering with tears. “Cas, I should have told you.”

Cas tilts his head. As a human, Cas wouldn’t have been much use to Dean. Surely Dean knows this. Cas watches him intently, the way he slumps his shoulders and hangs his head even as he looks at Cas with this pleading desperation. It makes Cas’s chest tighten again. Cas would much rather Dean be angry, lashing out violently, putting up some sort of fight. Cas feels a flush of anger, himself.

At least, he would, if he was human. This removed, diluted sort of emotion is confusing.

Or is it the roar of Grace drowning it out that’s confusing?

“Now everyone’s gone,” Dean croaks. “Kevin. And Sam’s hell knows where if he’s even still in there. And there’s you, too,” he motions toward Cas.

Cas squints in confusion. “I’m right here, Dean.”

Dean stares at him. Then he lowers his eyes and runs his palms down his haggard face. He doesn’t answer. “I don’t know where Sam is,” he says again, but this time he says it to the door frame by his feet. “I don’t know how to find him or where to start.” He’s not really talking to Cas anymore. Cas feels a sinking sensation in his chest, a sadness he can’t explain. “I can’t live without him. I was supposed to keep him safe.”

The geography of Dean’s face is a painful thing to behold; It has so many nooks and crevices for collecting suffering. Cas thinks maybe he’d already known this. Maybe he’s always known it, from the moment he first reknit it.

He wants to fix things for Dean. He wants to help him. But he doesn’t know how to. The Grace is so loud in his ears, under his skin, in his bones, and Dean feels far away, in more ways than one.

“I have powers again,” Cas draws himself up. “Surely there’s a way to find Sam and get this angel out of him. Anything you need, I’ll do for you.”

It’s not the right thing to say. Cas knows instantly. Because Dean doesn’t believe it. Doesn’t believe that even Cas’s powers could fix it this time around, almost like when he hadn’t believed he’d deserved to be saved. He admits as much by simply failing to reply. His hope is gone.

 _Anything you need, I’ll do for you._ Cas’s words replay in his head, etch themselves deep. They’re utterly sincere words, painful words. Words on fire.

Perhaps they mean something else.

Cas steps forward and wraps his arms around Dean.

Dean jumps a little in surprise under the hug. Cas is awkward and stiff and it’s very obvious, but he pushes through the vast, howling Grace, denies it with all the strength he has, pulls Dean in tight until the blistering warding tattoo in his side is pressed painfully between them, the pain sharp and real. Good. The pain makes Cas human, temporarily, clears away the distracting vastness of space, the stars, the universe.

This is something new, but it feels very old.

He holds Dean in the embrace until the wild Grace is so quiet and forgotten that he can hear his heart beat. Until he sinks back into humanity or into Dean – as if, in this moment, one doesn’t mean the other along with it. Until Dean is more receptive than surprised, and yields, drops his head into Cas’s shoulder and leans on him.  
  
Breaks down. 

Dean smells very strongly of whiskey. Cas is afraid to let go so he holds on tighter, realizes with wonder that what he is feeling now is at once desperation and security.

 “I’m right here,” Cas repeats, soft in Dean’s ear.   


End file.
